It's no secret that the 12 Principles of Animation are the fundamental building blocks for any animator. Get the hang of these basic techniques and you'll be on your way to understanding the language of animation.

First introduced in The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, these 12 principles have remained the quintessential roadmap for aspiring and experienced animators alike. Our animators are no exception! In fact, they have created their very own series of animation tutorials to explain the 12 Principles of Animation, using what you ask? Why, a brown bag, of course!

Last month we demonstrated the Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose principle, so now with no further adieu, let's continue our series with the fifth principle: Follow Through and Overlapping Action

Follow Through and Overlapping Action refers to two closely related techniques which help to render movement more realistically, and help to give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics, including the principle of inertia.

Follow Through is the idea that loosely connected parts of a body or object will continue moving after the character has stopped.

Overlapping Action is a similar idea in that it describes how different parts of a body or object tend to move at different rates.

In our example animation above, we apply both Follow Through and Overlapping Action to the brown bag as it races across the screen, as you can see from the image below:

Hope you've enjoyed our interpretation of the fifth principle, tune in next month for principle number 6: Slow In Slow Out and in case you missed it check out our version of the fourth principle here: Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose!